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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The Myth Of The Slumlord

Do not let the title of this blog post lead you to believe that every landlord has the best intentions when it comes to the safety and welfare of his tenets as it relates to his property. Nor should the reader determine that I am so naïve as to think that every landlord, especially those of low-income housing, does his best to keep his properties in good repair and make every attempt to provide clean, bug-free environments for his tents. But I do not think it constitutes a trip to fantasy land to say that most people who delve into property ownership for the purpose of providing rental opportunities to low-income folks, are hard working and do their best to provide adequate residence under the circumstances.
And what are those circumstances that work against the interest of the landlord, and therefore the interest of the low-incomers who inhabit their properties? Well for one, in some impoverished areas of some cities the local governments have instituted rent controls, which force landlords to make repair and improvement decisions based on the rising costs of such projects, weighed against the stagnant rents they collect. At some point, the expense overshadows income and landlords are forced to support their properties out of their own pockets or cut expenses.
Another circumstance with which low-income property owners must contend is the people themselves. I have a friend who has inner-city housing he rents and he once failed a Section-8 inspection because the tenets stove was covered in thick grease, food and roaches. My friend does not supply appliances, so the stove was purchased by the tenet. My friend also, to my knowledge, never cooked anything using the stove, so the filth was that of the tenet. But this is illustrative of how Leftist policies have made people so dependent that they are not even held responsible for cleaning the dwelling in which they live. Another tenet actually told my friend that he would have to replace the drywall in the house that she rented from him because it had worn out. The tenets children had punched so many holes in the walls that repair was not an option, and my friend had to completely re-drywall portions of the house.
Added to the aforementioned problems are ever stricter Environmental Protection Agency regulations with regards to the bogus lead scare, property taxes and water bills that climb as much as 25% a year or more, city authorities that fine landlords at a greater rate, and for less severe infractions, as they do owner occupied housing in the inner city and deteriorating neighborhoods that make it harder and harder to find tenets that resemble anything approaching civilized human beings. I challenge anyone to find me one instance where a landlord has gone into a tenets domicile and strewn garbage around and imported roaches and bedbugs. My friend rents places that are free of bedbugs and roaches, but somehow after people move in, the pests appear in large numbers.
The real slumlords are not the property owners but the Leftist politicians who have spent decades training inner city people to depend on someone else to do everything for them, including even the basic functions of civilized behavior, such as keeping their own domicile clean. Leftist politicians have created the myth of the slumlord in order to take away the power from individuals to do for themselves. The more that Leftist politicians can convince inner city dwellers that the filth and squalor in which they live is the fault of property owners, the better chance they have of being returned to office where they can institute restrictive policies against landlords which never improve the lives of the tenets, the landlords or the city at large, only the lives and fortunes of the Leftist politicians.